music Archives - Page 180 of 268 - Ramblin' with Roger

John Lennon would have been 75

Both the first verse of the song The Word and the first verse of John, chapter 1, begin with the words, “in the beginning…”

My friend Dan sent me this article How did the Beatles Get Their Name? Any Beatles fan worth his or her salt has heard the Flaming Pie story:
Many people ask what are Beatles? Why Beatles? Ugh, Beatles, how did the name arrive? So we will tell you. It came in a vision–a man appeared in a flaming pie and said unto them “From this day on you are Beatles with an A.” “Thank you, Mister Man,” they said, thanking him.

Flaming Pie, not coincidentally, is the name of a 1997 Paul McCartney album.

In the book The Gospel according to the Beatles by Steven Turner, it’s clear that John, far more than any of his cohorts, grew up with religious training. He was living with his Aunt Mimi (Stanley) Smith, who grew up Anglican, though neither she nor her sisters attended church as adults.

Still, Mimi and her sisters made sure their children were sent to Sunday school. John was a chorister and member of a Bible class. “For a time, he was attending events at the church four days a week.”

It was that respectable, impersonal, “bourgeois” version of Christianity that John eventually rejected. Still, the lessons he heard seeped into his thinking. The structure of the flaming pie story, Turner opines, is based on Acts 10:11, and/or Genesis 17. John himself called the flaming pie story “imitation Biblical stuff.”

“Mimi’s religion could be summarized by a stanza she framed on her wall:
However black the clouds may be
In time they’ll pass away
Have faith and trust and you will see
God’s light make bright your day
Compare these to the lyrics from Tell Me What You See, from the UK version of the Help! album.

The first time I heard The Word, from Rubber Soul, it reminded me of the beginning verses of the Gospel according to John. Both the first verse of the song and the first verse of chapter 1 begin with the words, “in the beginning…” John acknowledged to Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone magazine that The Word was the first song he’d written to impart knowledge. (“This could be a Salvation Army song,” said Paul at the time.)

Girl, also from Rubber Soul, is a response to a book John read called Masochism in the Modern Man by Theodor Reil, who suggested that the command to love one’s enemies and pray for those who persecute us is masochistic. “In John’s hands, those ideas led him to question whether the ‘girl’ had been raised to believe ‘that pain would lead to pleasure…’ Did the girl believe those who told her “that a man must break his back to earn his day of leisure’?”

Turner said that The Beatles “were skeptical, even dismissive of the church, but yet many of the core beliefs… were secularized versions of Christian beliefs.” All You Need Is Love would be a prime example.

There’s a lot more in the book, both involving the Beatles’ philosophy as a group and individually, but this is enough for now.

John Lennon would have been 75 today. And his son Sean turns 40!

Tell Me What You See: Lyrics, and Song
The Word: Lyrics, and Song
Girl: Lyrics, and Song
All You Need Is Love: Lyrics, and Song

Music Throwback Saturday: Dominque by the Singing Nun

She yearned for the seclusion of her convent but the cloister she returned to was not the same as the one she had left.

Less than two months before the Beatles hit America, the number one song on the US Billboard charts, for four straight weeks, was Dominique, a “French language popular song, written and performed” by Sister Luc-Gabrielle, “better known as Sœur Sourire or The Singing Nun.”

The story is that back in 1961, another nun had asked the folks at the Brussels office of Philips Records if they could pay the label to press a few hundred copies of their songs, to be given away. Philips executives said no, but the nuns were persistent, and finally snagged a brief recording session the next year

Sister Luc-Gabrielle, accompanied by four other nuns, recorded over a dozen songs. The album became a hit in Europe but got little traction in the US until Dominque was released as a single. Not only did the single top the charts, so did the album. And the song and/or album was a smash in a dozen other countries.

She even appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show on January 5, 1964, from the convent. A 1966 movie was made, more or less about her, starring Debbie Reynolds

But life after success was hard.

She yearned for the seclusion of her convent but the cloister she returned to was not the same as the one she had left. She met jealousy and backbiting over her success. Meanwhile her exposure to the outside world had changed her more than she realised and she found it hard to adjust back to the restrictions of religious life…

She enrolled on a course at university, where she wore lipstick and was even spotted smoking. More dramatically, she fell in love with a novice nun she met there: French-born Annie, who was 11 years her junior.

Scandalously, as far as the rest of the nuns were concerned, Jeanine left the convent so they could set up home together. Despite the outrage they had caused to strict Catholic morality the two lovers remained deeply religious, building an altar in their flat and taking communion together…

More worrying was the problem of money. All the proceeds from her recordings had gone to the convent and as such was not taxable. But record-keeping had been poor and when the tax authorities started asking questions Jeanine [Deckers] could not produce receipts to prove her story.

Although Dominique had made some $100,000 in royalties for the convent and she had taken nothing herself Sister Smile now found herself facing a massive tax bill…

By now addicted to booze and painkillers she and Annie opened a home for autistic children in the Belgian town of Wavre in 1983 but it was forced to close for lack of funds.

Despair closed in and on March 29, 1985 the two women took their own lives.

LISTEN to Dominique HERE or HERE.

Julie Andrews is 80

The Daughter thinks The Wife looks a bit like Julie Andrews from her Cinderella era, which pleases The Wife.

It is quite likely that the final episode of MASH that aired in 1983 was NOT the highest-rated non-sports television broadcast in United States history.

Some believe that the 1957 broadcast of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s CINDERELLA, starring a rising Broadway performer named Julie Andrews eclipsed it, with 107 million viewers in the US alone.

I watched Julie Andrews in a ton of television performances, including several with Carol Burnett. But it wasn’t until this century that I ever saw her in a movie, when the Daughter introduced me to The Princess Diaries and its sequel, on video. No, I saw parts of Victor/Victoria, but not enough to count it. I’ve also HEARD her in Shrek 2, Enchanted, and Despicable Me.

My Julie movie drought is odd because my mother had the soundtracks of both Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music, which I grew up listening to. My current household saw Mary Poppins in December 2011, and The Sound of Music in the Fall of 2013. The Cinderella DVD was a 2009 family Christmas present; The Daughter thinks The Wife looks a bit like Julie from that era, which pleases The Wife.

My favorite Julie Andrews memory is an LP that came out in the mid-1960s. Back then, Firestone Tire Co. produced a new Christmas album every year, for sale at gas stations for a dollar. I STILL own an album featuring Julie Andrews.

Unfortunately, her gorgeous singing voice was wrecked by a throat operation in 1997, as she notes here, limited to a sing-speak kind of voice. She’s now concentrated on writing children’s books.

LISTEN TO:

Sings for King George VI in 1948 (Aged 13)

12 year old Julie Andrews~Polonaise; Je suis Titania – Mignon

In my own little corner -Cinderella

A Spoonful of Sugar – Mary Poppins

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious – Mary Poppins

The Sound of Music

My Favorite Things – “The Sound of Music”

Edelweiss -The Sound of Music (not the movie version)

The Bells of Christmas, noted at the time, correctly, as “one of the best new Christmas Carols to come along in years.”

September rambling #2, hernia operation edition: Consent 101

SamuraiFrog completes his Weird Al epic.

Am I having fun this morning? Hernia operation. I may be “out of pocket” for a few days.

Why did the Speaker of the House quit? The Plot Against Planned Parenthood and John Boehner.

From the American Conservative, no less: The Quiet Grand Strategy of Barack Obama. “Are the president’s diplomatic initiatives winning a new American Century?”

Study: White people react to evidence of white privilege by claiming greater personal hardships.

There Is No Excuse for How Universities Treat Adjuncts.

Re: the Muslim teen who created a clock and got arrested, it’s now clear they didn’t think he had a bomb. And talk about foolishness in school settings: 11-year-old gifted student suspended 1 year for having a pot leaf that wasn’t a pot leaf.

From Wondermark: Fauxtopia.

A TIDE commercial.

And now for the sex portion of our post: Consent 101 and How Often the Average Couple Has Sex.

Too Much in Love to Say Good Night.

End Daylight Saving Time.

Harvard linguist points out the 58 most commonly misused words and phrases.

Now I Know: Switzerland Making Headway Against Rabies and The Mystery of the Appalachian Bend and Everyday Superheroes at the Elder Care Facility and How Smoking Gave PEZ a Boost and How to Pay Yourself $2.1 Million in Taxes.

From Donna: “Thinking of writing a bedtime book for grownups along the lines of GOODNIGHT MOON. It will be titled SHUTUP BRAIN.”

R.I.P., Nancy J. Ellegate, who sat about 40 meters from my desk at work, and who I talked with about myriad topics several times a week.

A bridge comes down in Binghamton, my hometown.

Ron Marz on reviewing comics.

There Will Officially Be NO MORE X-Men in Marvel Comics.

A nice little primer on aspect ratio in movies.

Muppets. As of this writing, I haven’t yet watched the first episode of the new show yet. TV’s Newest Reality Stars (e.g., Kermit Gets Set Up) and has the new show taken an-unfortunately-dark-turn and Joey Mazzarino has left Sesame Street.

I Made Alex Trebek Say ‘Turd Ferguson’.

The longest-running shows on Broadway.

R.I.P., Ben Cauley of the Mar-Keys.

Like what you like, ABBA division.

Joe Jackson’s Ode To Joy.

SamuraiFrog completes his Weird Al epic: 10-6, and 5-1. Could my response to his response to a post of mine be far behind?

Chuck Miller says goodbye to his 78s.

MASHUPS: Blondie Vs. The Doors – Rapture Riders and Stevie Wonder vs The Clash – Uptight/Rock The Casbah.

The history of the memorable and covinous Dick Van Dyke Show comic books published by Gold Key in the sixties.

GOOGLE ALERT:
What was the first comic book you remember reading? and Tips for Surviving and Thriving at The Albany Comic Con and a roundtable discussion on the topic of comics blogging and Do comics matter? (And I don’t mean Chris Rock, I mean Sgt. Rock.)

Re: the second cartoon:
Reza Farazmand says: “Feel free to repost these comics on your blog/website/forehead, as long as it’s for non-commercial purposes. Just attribute the comic to poorlydrawnlines.com and include a link back. Thaaanks.”

Music Throwback Saturday: I Don’t Need No Doctor

It’s quite likely that I heard the Humble Pie version before I heard the Charles iteration,

As is my custom, I was playing a bunch of the music of Ray Charles, in honor of his birthday on September 23. (It was also Bruce Springsteen’s birthday that same day.)

One of the songs on a greatest hits album was I Don’t Need No Doctor, written by the great Nick Ashford and Valerie Simpson, with Jo Armstead. But I remembered a very different version in my LP collection.

Humble Pie was “an English rock band… during 1969. They are known as one of the… first supergroups… The original band lineup featured lead vocalist and guitarist Steve Marriott from the Small Faces, vocalist and guitarist Peter Frampton from The Herd, former Spooky Tooth bassist Greg Ridley and a seventeen-year-old drummer, Jerry Shirley.

“In 1971 Humble Pie released… a live album recorded at the Fillmore East in New York entitled Performance Rockin’ the Fillmore. The live album reached No. 21 on the US Billboard 200 and was certified gold by the RIAA… But Frampton left the band by the time the album was released and went on to enjoy success as a solo artist.”

It’s quite likely that I heard the Humble Pie version on college radio, or some other FM radio hit before I heard the Charles iteration when I was listening primarily to Top 40 back in my hometown, since Ray’s take didn’t chart high enough.

There are several more versions of the song – The Sonics, The Chocolate Watch Band, New Riders of the Purple Sage, metal bands W.A.S.P. and Great White, The Nomads, Styx, John Scofield, John Mayer, and jazz singer Roseanna Vitro, among others.

I Don’t Need No Doctor:
Ray Charles, #72 US pop, 45 R&B, 1966
Humble Pie, #73 US pop, 1971 (Billboard Hot 100)